Evaluation is typically organized on a positive-to-negative valence continuum. We advocate instead for greater functional granularity. We do so with our Dual Implicit Process Model (DIPM), which serves as a case in point by having provided both conceptual and empirical insights via distinguishing evaluation of physically-threatening negativity (i.e., stimuli that are evaluatively negative and diagnostic of immediate physical danger) from nonthreatening negativity (i.e., stimuli that are also evaluatively negative but not immediately physically harmful). Specifically, we (a) briefly review the historical role of valence and its complications, (b) detail distinctions between physical-threat-negative and nonthreat-negative processes, (c) outline the DIPM and its empirical support, (d) illustrate with concrete empirical examples the explanatory benefit of the DIPM’s functional evaluative distinction, and (e) argue for the theoretical advantages of using a multi-dimensional, process-based taxonomy of evaluation over a simple valence-based one. Understanding the distinct functional nature of experiences that have traditionally been collapsed together as negative valence provides a more detailed and accurate roadmap for addressing critical question about human evaluation.

Numerous psychological theories emphasize the importance of unconscious cognition. However, research on unconscious processing has faced stigma and methodological challenges, especially in minimizing contaminating influences of conscious cognition. Continuous flash suppression (CFS), an image presentation technique, has the potential to enlarge the window through which we may view the workings of the unconscious mind prior to the onset of conscious cognition. But CFS can be technically challenging and expensive to implement. We have developed software, CFS-VR, that increases access to CFS as a methodological tool using a basic VR headset. CFS-VR allows for the presentation and recording of responses to many different visual stimuli and trial types, and is freely available. This article provides a brief tutorial and explores research domains (evaluative conditioning, priming, and mere exposure) where CFS-VR can address unresolved and novel research questions.

The most effective way to reduce mental illness stigma is through contact (Corrigan et al., 2012); however, such programs are difficult to implement. Researchers have turned to indirect contact with some success (Mann & Himelein, 2008), yet the exact mechanism behind narrative-based programs remains unknown. The present study seeks to isolate one possible mechanism-perspective-taking. Perspective-taking enjoys wide support in prejudice research (Batson, Early et al., 1997) but is relatively untested with mental illness stigma. One hundred eighty-one college students heard a narrative of a student with bipolar (I) disorder or HIV and were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (perspective-taking, objective-stance, or "no-instruction"). Participants then completed outcome measures tapping stigma toward the individual and group (social distance, global affect, discrimination). Participants reported greater social distance toward the person with bipolar versus HIV, but discrimination and global affect scores did not differ by stigma target. The perspective-taking intervention was successful in reducing stigma across multiple variables for both bipolar and HIV conditions. The intervention failed to change global affect toward persons with mental illness but did improve feelings toward those with HIV. Results are discussed in the broader context of the power of stories, and the differences between reducing mental illness stigma versus other prejudices.

The theme of limited resources pervades the mental health landscape. Practitioners often lack adequate resources to provide interventions for all who could benefit from them, and potential beneficiaries often lack adequate cognitive, financial, and temporal resources to make use of them. Even under rare conditions of bounty, many intensive interventions show small, fleeting effects. Such a landscape begs a space for behavioral nudges: cheap, easily implementable tweaks to people’s decision environments aimed at improving health while preserving autonomy. Although existing nudges can be effective, they have their own limitations. Here we explore the case for Evaluative Conditioning (EC) as a largely overlooked yet potentially effective kind of behavioral nudge that can reap nudges’ benefits while addressing some of their limitations.

De Neys argues against assigning exclusive capacities to automatic versus controlled processes. The dual implicit process model provides a theoretical rationale for the exclusivity of automatic threat processing, and corresponding data provide empirical evidence of such exclusivity. De Neys's dismissal of exclusivity is premature and based on a limited sampling of psychological research.

Disputes about the value of Diversity Training (DT) stem partly from disputes about what DT should entail and what its expected outcomes should be. We answer previous reviews' calls for approaches to DT that are grounded in empirically supported theoretical frameworks. Specifically, and based on longstanding theory and research on attitude-behavior relations, we offer a dual-process framework that identifies key factors for interventions to reduce individual-level discrimination in organizational settings, including (a) automatic attitudes/bias, (b) awareness of the impact of bias, (c) motives relating to egalitarianism and conformity, and (d) the opportunity to engage in deliberative decision making. We offer suggestions, where available, for how DT might employ basic research known to impact these factors to construct more effective interventions. Finally, we offer guidance for targeted rather than "one-size-fits-all" approaches to DT and advocate for an integration of DT tailored to individuals with structural interventions tailored to organizations.

Recently, major societal events have shaped perceptions of race relations in the US. The current work argues that people's motivations to be nonprejudiced toward Black people have changed in concert with these broader societal forces. Analyses of two independent archival datasets reveal that nonprejudiced motivations changed predictably in accordance with shifts in the social milieu over the last 15 years. In one dataset (N = 13,395), we track movement in internal and external motivations to respond without prejudice from 2004 to 2017. Internal motivation initially decreased before ticking upward following multiple events suggesting worsening race relations (e.g., noteworthy killings of unarmed Black men, resurgent racialized politics). Conversely, external motivation initially increased but reversed course across the same time span. A second dataset (N = 2,503) corroborates these trends in two conceptually related nonprejudiced motivations. Results suggest that changes in nonprejudiced motivations may reflect broader shifts in the sociopolitical climate.

Dual-process models of cognition distinguish relatively automatic from relatively controlled processes in terms of their interactive impact on perception, judgment, and behavior. Such models have advanced explanation and prediction in a variety of domains across psychology but have yet to be comprehensively applied to the pressing societal and public health problem of suicide. We propose a model of suicide that integrates dual-process models of social cognition with ideation-to-action conceptualizations of suicide. The model specifies: (a) suicide-relevant automatic associations involving the self, others, the future, death, and bodily harm, (b) suicide-relevant motives involving the self, interpersonal relations, the future, and the desire to die, and (c) hypotheses regarding the conditions under which automatic associations and motives individually and interactively impact suicidal ideation and lethal action at various stages of an ideation-to-action framework. The model recasts a number of suicide-relevant variables in terms of the opportunity factor of dual-process theories of attitudes, which encompasses capacity-relevant variables (e.g., time, cognitive resources) that determine whether suicide-relevant judgments and behavior are the result of relatively automatic associations or more controlled, deliberative cognition. Accordingly, the model articulates a number of novel predictions regarding the sources of suicide-relevant automatic associations, motives, and opportunity factors, as well as their interactive influences on suicidal ideation and action. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeThis article refers to:Implicit Bias ≠ Bias on Implicit Measures

Greenwald, Dasgupta, Dovidio, Kang, Moss-Racusin, and Teachman (this issue) distinguish among individual-, group-, and institutional-level interventions to reduce discrimination. We refer to the first two as “hearts and minds” approaches because they are designed to mitigate or reduce prejudice within individuals. Institutionallevel interventions, on the other hand, attempt to render individual biases irrelevant to decision processes through organizational policies and practices. On the basis of the available evidence, the authors of the target article doubt the efficacy of hearts-and-minds approaches and emphasize the prospects of institutional-level approaches from a preventative public-health perspective. As we are all steeped in the same literatures, we sympathize with the authors’ doubt. However, and despite both social and scientific attention away from individual bias and toward systemic bias, we argue that it is difficult to create systemic change by bypassing hearts and minds and that interventions attempting to change them should be preserved and refined. To that end, we offer a framework that we hope will advance research and interventions that target groups and individuals. Ultimately, we encourage an integration of individual-level and public-health perspectives to address implicit bias. Before presenting our case, it is worth noting that we have few substantive disagreements with the authors’ take on the literature as it presently sits. We are in general agreement that implicit bias is pervasive and influential, that the Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a reasonably good tool with which assess it, and that implicit bias and explicit bias are not necessarily distinct entities in people’s heads (cf. Wilson et al., 2000). We also agree, and echo work by Paluck (e.g., Paluck et al., 2021) and Lai (e.g., Lai et al., 2016), that interventions designed to weaken implicit bias (or prejudice generally) tend to disappoint once they leave the confines of a single laboratory session. Our points of departure from the authors include how implicit bias ought to be conceptualized and its modes of influence on judgments and behavior. Each of these have implications for interventions aimed at both mitigating bias’s impact and reducing bias itself. We also offer insight into two questions posed by the authors for which they believe there is insufficient data to answer: (a) “Are implicit biases introspectively (consciously) accessible?” (we think they are) and (b) “How do the association strengths measured by the IAT influence social behavior?” (we will explain below). The dual-process framework we describe may help resolve some of these disagreements, illuminate when and how individual implicit bias leads to discrimination, and explain how interventions might be improved to mitigate or reduce it. A primary point we hope to convey is that the institutional policies and practices informed by publichealth perspectives are not immune to the effects of biased individual hearts and minds. Policies and practices are proposed, adopted, enforced, and evaluated by individuals. Without buy-in by individuals who have power within organizations, policies and practices are likely to be inconsistently enforced or actively undermined (Dobbin & Kalev, 2016; Pearce & Conger, 2003). People wish to see value in their work and do not like to be told what to do. Interventions that do not seek buy-in, emphasize what not to do, or are perceived to reduce individual autonomy are likely to backfire (e.g., Does et al., 2011; Legault et al., 2011). In fact, from a historical perspective, some argue that institutional change has been driven more by individuals at the grass-roots level than by institutional leadership (e.g., Scott, 2012). For example, social-movement theory recognizes the limitations of top-down-only approaches and highlight the role of “tempered radicals,” who work within organizations to effect change from the bottom up, even without formal power (Meyerson, 2003).

A neural architecture that preferentially processes immediate survival threats relative to other negatively and positively valenced stimuli presumably evolved to facilitate survival. The empirical literature on threat superiority, however, has suffered two problems: methodologically distinguishing threatening stimuli from negative stimuli and differentiating whether responses are sped and strengthened by threat superiority or delayed and diminished by conscious processing of nonthreatening stimuli. We addressed both problems in three within-subject studies that compared responses to empirically validated sets of threating, negative, positive, and neutral stimuli, and isolated threat superiority from the opposing effect of conscious attention by presenting stimuli outside conscious perception. Consistent with threat superiority, threatening stimuli elicited stronger skin-conductance (Study 1), startle-eyeblink (Study 2), and more negative downstream evaluative responses (Study 3) relative to the undifferentiated responses to negative, positive, and neutral stimuli.

The Dual Implicit Process Model (March et al., 2018a) distinguishes the implicit processing of physical threat (i.e., “can it hurt or kill me?”) from valence (i.e., “do I dislike/like it?”). Five studies tested whether automatic anti-Black bias is due to White Americans associating Black men with threat, negative valence, or both. Studies 1 and 2 assessed how quickly White participants decided whether positive, negative, and threatening images were good versus bad when primed by Black versus White male-faces. Studies 3 and 4 assessed how early in the decision process White participants began deciding whether Black and White (and, in Study 3, Asian) male-faces displaying anger, sadness, happiness, or no emotion were, in Study 3, dangerous, depressed, cheerful, or calm or, in Study 4, dangerous, negative, or positive. Study 5 assessed how quickly White participants decided whether negative and threatening words were negative versus dangerous when primed by Black versus White male-names. All studies indicated that White Americans automatically associate Black men with physical threat. Study 3 indicated the association is unique to Black men and did not extend to Asian men as a general intergroup effect. Studies 3, 4, and 5, which simultaneously paired threat against negativity, indicated that the Black-threat association is stronger than a Black-negative association.

Learning one is similar to a stigmatized group can threaten one’s identity and prompt disassociation from the group. What are the consequences of learning of a similarity to a stigmatized group when that similarity implies possible recategorization into the group? We investigated how learning of an immutable, recategorization implying similarity with an outgroup affects implicitly and explicitly assessed prejudice. In Study 1, White participants who believed they had above average genetic overlap with African Americans showed decreased prejudice on implicit but not explicit measures. In Study 2, straight/heterosexual participants who were led to believe they exhibited some same-sex attraction showed reduced implicitly assessed prejudice, but only if they believed sexual orientation was biologically determined. Thus, learning of an identity-implying similarity with an outgroup can reduce implicit prejudice if that group membership is believed to be immutable. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Evaluative conditioning is one of the most widely studied procedures for establishing and changing attitudes. The surveillance task is a highly cited evaluative-conditioning paradigm and one that is claimed to generate attitudes without awareness. The potential for evaluative-conditioning effects to occur without awareness continues to fuel conceptual, theoretical, and applied developments. Yet few published studies have used this task, and most are characterized by small samples and small effect sizes. We conducted a high-powered (N = 1,478 adult participants), preregistered close replication of the original surveillance-task study (Olson & Fazio, 2001). We obtained evidence for a small evaluative-conditioning effect when "aware" participants were excluded using the original criterion-therefore replicating the original effect. However, no such effect emerged when three other awareness criteria were used. We suggest that there is a need for caution when using evidence from the surveillance-task effect to make theoretical and practical claims about "unaware" evaluative-conditioning effects.

Physically threatening objects are negative, but negative objects are not necessarily threatening. Moreover, responses elicited by threats to physical harm are distinct from those elicited by other negatively (and positively) valenced stimuli. We discuss the importance of the threat versus valence distinction for implicit measurement both in terms of the activated evaluation and the design of the measure employed to assess that evaluation. We suggest that accounting for the distinct evaluations of threat and valence better enables implicit measures to provide understanding and prediction of subsequent judgment, emotion, and behavior.

Gender role theory argues that men are socialized to adhere to masculine norms that foment resistance to help-seeking in general and medical care in particular. We hypothesize an automatic link in memory between medical care and masculinity among men, developed through gender role socialization, such that by the time men have reached adulthood, medical-related stimuli inescapably and unintentionally activate masculinity-relevant concepts. Across two studies we employ a lexical decision task with medical and non-medical primes to demonstrate an automatic link between medicine and masculinity (in addition to other concepts) among male university students. Further, we illustrate how self-affirmation may temporarily untether the two concepts. A novel "masculine-affirmation" was also explored, which increased the medicine-masculinity link.

Crowdsourcing refers to an online micro-task market to access and recruit large groups of participants. One of the most popular crowdsourcing platforms is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). MTurkers are as reliable as traditional workers yet they receive much less monetary compensation (Pittman and Sheehan 2016). Many MTurk workers consider themselves exploited (Busarovs 2013), yet, despite this, many continue to complete tasks on MTurk. The purpose of this study is to investigate how MTurk workers dealing with inequities in effort and compensation. We experimentally manipulate expected effort and worker payment in order to compare how effort verses wage inequity affects workers’ attitudes towards a series of tasks. We found that those paid more rated the task as more enjoyable and important than those paid less. Implications of this study are discussed.

Thwarted social connection is a critical risk factor for suicidality, and several theoretical perspectives highlight the importance of interpersonal affect to social connection. Given that marriage is an increasingly important source of social connection, we examined the role of automatic spousal attitudes-conceptualized as spontaneously activated affective associations involving one's spouse-in predicting suicidal thoughts in 3 longitudinal studies of married couples. Studies 1a (N = 204) and 1b (N = 159) demonstrated that more positive automatic spousal attitudes, assessed implicitly shortly after the marriage as the speed with which people categorized positive relative to negative words following photo-primes of their spouse, were associated with a weakened probability of the self-reported suicidal thoughts 1 year later. Study 2 (N = 229) provided further evidence that automatic spousal attitudes predict suicidal thoughts by showing that newly conditioned automatic spousal attitudes predicted suicidal thoughts. In that study, more positive automatic spousal attitudes exhibited after an evaluative conditioning procedure were associated with a reduced probability of suicidal thoughts 2 months later. Across studies, an increase (1 SD) in automatic spousal attitudes was associated with approximately a 50% decreased probability of suicidal thought. In all 3 studies, implicitly measured spousal attitudes captured variance in suicidal thoughts not captured by implicitly measured attitudes toward oneself and self-reported marital satisfaction, both of which proved to be less reliable predictors of suicidal thoughts. These findings highlight the importance of automatic interpersonal processes to well-being generally and suicidality specifically, and may thereby suggest novel methods for reducing risk of suicidality.

People commonly understood the physical world through psychological processes in ancient times, sometimes metaphorically but often literally: The sun and climate were manifestations of Ra, the Egyptian sun god, and fire was the embodiment of the god Agni in Hindu tradition. The pendulum has since swung the other way: The natural sciences have gradually deanthropomorphized the physical world, and with great success. So it isn’t surprising that people now seek to understand the psychological world through physical processes, sometimes metaphorically but often literally. We do, of course, see the utility in advancing mathematical models of human mental processes. For example, modeling the electrical communications of neurons and the movements of neurotransmitters onto the properties of physical movement has led to advances in understanding how the brain works (e.g., Busemeyer & Wang, 2015). And we understand the temptation to continue the exercise of reducing psychological processes to physical ones (e.g., Pentland, 2015; also see work on biomedicalization). However, we wonder whether the pendulum has swung too far in this direction (for a related argument, see Kvaale, Haslam, & Gottdiener, 2013). Despite our concerns about its premise, the Attitude Entropy (AE) framework has potential to provide an engaging challenge to conventional approaches to attitudes research. For a novel model to challenge orthodoxy, it must engage directly with it: The model’s concepts must interact with current concepts in specific and clearly articulated ways. Thus, we first address the issue of how clearly and compellingly the AE framework is communicated, and how variables central to the AE framework engage with variables central to the attitudes and persuasion literature. To offer advances in understanding of any phenomena, a novel model must (ideally) explain existing phenomena and make predictions about as-yet unobserved phenomena. Thus, we address, second, whether the AE framework appears to offer such advances. In the domains of attitude measurement, attitude strength, and attitude consistency, we remain open but skeptical about the explanatory insight offered by the AE framework.